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Wig   Listen
noun
Wig  n.  
1.
A covering for the head, consisting of hair interwoven or united by a kind of network, either in imitation of the natural growth, or in abundant and flowing curls, worn to supply a deficiency of natural hair, or for ornament, or according to traditional usage, as a part of an official or professional dress, the latter especially in England by judges and barristers.
2.
An old seal; so called by fishermen.
Wig tree. (Bot.) See Smoke tree, under Smoke.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wig" Quotes from Famous Books



... just now," Sandy answered, "but look up on top of the ridge, and see if you can tell what George is trying to say to us. That's Boy Scout wig-wag, ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... drink. I looked up to the landlord for counsel. He was a short, squab man, with a bulbous excresence growing out from between his shoulders, that I suppose passed for a head, though it looked like a wen; a kind of expletive, to wear a hat on, or to fill up the hollow of a shabby wig. 'What shall we do with him?' said I. 'Hustle him out!' cried he; 'hustle him out! he didn't get his liquor here: I've no room for such company!' I then endeavored to put my companion upon his feet, but his legs bent under him, and his whole ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... with the rest of Roberts's crew, when one witness, Captain Trahern, deposed that the prisoner dressed himself up in the captain's best suit of clothes, his new tye wig, and called loudly for a bottle of wine, and then, very arrogantly, gave orders as to the steering of the ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... character. He has the watery eye of old age and this takes away somewhat from the impression of energy. It is not a clever face but honest, rather sad, and unmistakeably Scottish in type. Nairne wears the red coat of the British officer and a wig in the fashion of the time. The portrait might be one of a frequenter of court functions in London rather than that of a hardy pioneer at Murray Bay, who had carried on a stern battle ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... vainly struggling to ameliorate their hapless destiny. They were visibly grumbling at the weather, scolding at the dust, and heating themselves like a furnace, by striving against the heat. How well I remember the fat gentleman without his coat, who was wiping his forehead, heaving up his wig, and certainly uttering that English ejaculation, which, to our national reproach, is the phrase of our language best known on the continent. And that poor boy, red-hot, all in a flame, whose mamma, having divested her own person of all superfluous apparel, was trying to relieve ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... this to have described my hero. He was rather embonpoint, but fat was not with him, as it sometimes is, twin brother to fun; his fat was weighty, he was inclined to blubber. He wore a wig, and carried in his countenance an expression indicative of the seriousness of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various

... gentleman of Dr. Anderson's celebrity; but when you do me the honour to ask my assistance in your proposed publication, alas, Sir! you might as well think to cheapen a little honesty at the sign of an advocate's wig, or humility under the Geneva band. I am a miserable hurried devil, worn to the marrow in the friction of holding the noses of the poor publicans to the grindstone of the excise! and, like Milton's Satan, for ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... preparation of this picture gave rise to controversies in which the Emperor was compelled to interfere; and the case was serious, as we shall see, since a Cardinal's wig was in question. David persisted in not painting the head of Cardinal Caprara with a wig; and on his part the Cardinal was not willing to allow him to paint his head without the wig. Some took sides with the painter, some with the model; and though the affair was treated ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... a corner and came face to face with Ronald Breton. The young barrister was now in his wig and gown and carried a bundle of papers tied up with pink tape; he was escorting two young ladies, who were laughing and chattering as they tripped along at his side. And Spargo, glancing at them meditatively, instinctively told ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher

... responsibility to do more than make a mere suggestion in the case. How would it do to build to him? If Aurelia can afford the expense, let her furnish her mutilated lover with wooden arms and wooden legs, and a glass eye and a wig, and give him another show; give him ninety days, without grace, and if he does not break his neck in the mean time, marry him and take the chances. It does not seem to me that there is much risk, anyway, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... cut all your hair," said he. "Eva has quite a wig; one can hardly see her face for it. Give your papa a kiss, my little girl! I'll take your wig from you ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... dress-up in a Druid's robe, and put on a wig and a long false beard, to impress you silly people. I have to put on a purple mantle. I have no patience with such mummery; but you expect it from us; so I suppose it must be kept up. Will you wait here until Zozim comes, please [she turns to enter ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... true, are more or less tainted with the errors of industrial communities. It is, of course, where the early marriages of the ghettoes prevail, where the married woman religiously covers her own hair with a wig immediately after marriage, where marriage, as I have said, is regarded as a duty, and love, therefore, is not considered to be of overwhelming importance, that the full difference between Jewish and Gentile ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... skeleton keys; ingenious upholsterers who indulged in paper-hanging on the sly; shoemakers who did half-soling and heeling, their day's work set to dry on the window-sill, not to mention those addicted to the use of the piano, banjo, or harp, as well as the wig and dress makers who lightened ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith

... birds, as they sat on the spray, Or the traveler grave on the king's highway. It was not too nice to hustle the bags Of the beggar, and flutter his dirty rags. 'Twas so bold that it feared not to play its joke With the doctor's wig, and the gentleman's cloak. ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... mistress was stout. Her hair was magnificent in quality and quantity, but, alas! was of the unpopular tint called red; not auburn, or copper hued, or the famous Titian color, but a blazing, fiery red, which made it look like a comic wig. Her face was pale and freckled, her eyes black—in strange contrast to her hair, and her mouth large, but garnished with an ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... doctor. The complaint your father is suffering from is one I know well. It will be gone to-morrow, perhaps by sundown, and the only pain it will leave behind, he will feel under his wig. Only leave him ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... if he disguised himself as soon as he got away from here," remarked Tom. "He could easily put on a false mustache, and a wig would fit capitally over that ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer

... she was no longer story. And her glass—as well as her husband—told her that equal to; after a few pages she lost her understanding of a she suffered daily in her appearance. Her hair was falling; she one day told the servant that she would soon have to buy a wig. Poor Alice! And she had not even the resource of railing against the social state. What a pity she ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... Glebe, the good doctor of Wancote, in a grey bag-wig and hunting-boots, would take a whole handful of snuff, while he swore that Mistress Betty was only at her best ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various

... Sims, I'll lease his upland farm; I'll get it cheap enough from him— Jest see his long right arm About her waist—looks orful big! Why, gosh! he's bought a new brown wig! ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... what you tell me," he said gallantly. "I was thinking Silent Simon was in luck's way—but perhaps you're going to wig him?" ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston

... many a good day's fishing. Ah, no! there is the cause; the hat of a mightier than you—the thunder-spirit himself. Thor is at hand, while the breeze, awe-stricken, falls dead calm before his march. Behold, climbing above that eastern ridge, his huge powdered cauliflower-wig, barred with a ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... brutus, and better than any in his repertoire of theatrical perukes. Succeeding at last in his feline and fixed purpose, he actually stuck his claws in my locks, and, addressing me in the deepest sepulchral tones, asked, 'Little girl, where did you get your wig?' Lord Erskine came to the rescue and liberated my head, and all tried to retrieve the awkwardness of the scene. Meanwhile, Kemble, peevish, as half-tipsy people generally are, drew back muttering and fumbling in his pocket, evidently with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... Mademoiselle Baptistine's gown was cut on the patterns of 1806, with a short waist, a narrow, sheath-like skirt, puffed sleeves, with flaps and buttons. She concealed her gray hair under a frizzed wig known as the baby wig. Madame Magloire had an intelligent, vivacious, and kindly air; the two corners of her mouth unequally raised, and her upper lip, which was larger than the lower, imparted to her a rather crabbed and imperious look. So long as Monseigneur held his peace, she ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... is!" said Lady Fulkeward, settling her "Duchess of Gainsborough" hat on her powdered wig more becomingly and smiling up in the face of Ross Courtney, who happened to be standing close by. "So sweetly unconventional! Everybody here thinks her improper; she may be, but I like her. I'm not a bit of ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... but you are a sight," said Rosetta Muriel, entirely forgiving Peggy for the prohibition of the apple-green silk. "Is that a wig you've ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... Vincents and Northumberlands once rustled and glittered; and there is nothing to recall those brilliant days except the painted tiles on the chimney, where there is a choice society of coquettes and beaux, priests and conjurers, beggars and dancers, and every wig and hoop dates back to ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... fashionable curly 'crop,' aroused his curiosity. Stretching unsteadily across the table, he suddenly, to quote her own words, 'struck his claws into my locks, and addressing me in his deepest tones, asked, "Little girl, where did you buy your wig?"' Lord Erskine hastily came to the rescue, but Kemble, rendered peevish by his interference, took a volume of The Wild Irish Girl out of his pocket, and after reading aloud one of the most high-flown passages, asked, 'Little girl, why did ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... to "Miss," a stout woman with a red, wrinkled face who, when she smiled, showed a set of teeth that shone like yellow dominoes. In the studio Renovales and his friends often laughed at "Miss's" appearance and eccentricities, at her red wig that was placed on her head as carelessly as a hat, at her terrible false teeth, at her bonnets that she made herself out of chance bits of ribbon and discarded ornaments, of her chronic lack of appetite, that forced her to live on beer, which kept her in a continual ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... easy to realise what they wrote about the dishevelled gaiety and lawless license of Chioggia in the days of powder, sword-knot, and soprani. Baffo walks beside us in hypocritical composure of bag-wig and senatorial dignity, whispering unmentionable sonnets in his dialect of Xe and Ga. Somehow or another that last dotage of S. Mark's decrepitude is more recoverable by our fancy than the heroism of Pisani ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... with which he accepted the role of head of the Moscow opposition. In spite of this the old man inspired in all his visitors alike a feeling of respectful veneration—especially of an evening when he came in to tea in his old-fashioned coat and powdered wig and, aroused by anyone, told his abrupt stories of the past, or uttered yet more abrupt and scathing criticisms of the present. For them all, that old-fashioned house with its gigantic mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture, powdered footmen, and the stern shrewd old man (himself a relic of the past ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... ordinary wrapping-paper to attract as little attention as possible,' and, having completed my preparations, I removed the bandage from the dead man's head and threw it with the private keys to my library into the metallic box which had held the jewels. Then donning the black wig and mustache which my visitor had thrown aside on disclosing his identity, together with a long ulster which he had left in the tower-room, I took one farewell look at the familiar apartments and their silent occupant ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... pompous, irritable, and easily upset. He never purrs. He is unpleasantly and obscurely spotted. He seems to be afraid of losing his dignity, and to be conscious of the fact that his reputation—like that of some English officials—depends on the overpowering wig which he now wears, though his Macedonian forerunner had no such growth to give an illusive appearance of size and capacity to his head. However opinions may differ about these things, we will agree that the elephant ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... set off together. But, early as it was, Sir Richard Cludde had been before us. When we entered Mr. Vetch's office, there was the burly knight with his hand on the door, flinging a parting word at the lawyer, who sat behind his desk with his wig awry, the picture of harassment and woe. Sir Richard gave a curt nod to the captain, but vouchsafed me not ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... wife were the host himself, an officer, and an old and very stupid lady in a wig, a widow who owned a music-shop; she loved playing cards and played remarkably well. But it was Eugene Mihailovich's wife who was the winner all the time. The best cards were continually in her hands. At her ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... space of time between his return from Wales in May, 1902, and the spending of his Long Vacation of 1905 as an Esquire by the Common Law of England called to the Bar, and entitled to wear a becoming grey wig ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... of the Public Prosecutor, to that of the President of the Local Council, to that of the Chief of Police, to that of the Commissioner of Taxes, and to that of the local Director of State Factories. True, the task of remembering every big-wig in this world of ours is not a very easy one; but at least our visitor displayed the greatest activity in his work of paying calls, seeing that he went so far as to pay his respects also to the Inspector of the Municipal Department of Medicine and to the City Architect. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... said, "you will probably meet the cleverest one we have upon the English bench. Without his robe and wig, some people find him insignificant. Personally, I must confess that I never feel his eyes upon me without a shiver. They say that he never loses sight of a fact or forgets ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... buckles covered with tinfoil. Short black trousers. White stockings. Fancy colonial coat and hat. White colonial wig. A short, stout man of middle age. Always ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare

... round, catlike head, with its prominent cheek bones, and the white wig combed high on the top, contrasted with the rouged, sunken cheeks and eyebrows ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... recovered to go out, I proceeded to a barber, and on the plea of continual headache, for which it had been recommended that I should shave my head, requested him to make me a false tonsure. In a few days it was ready, and being very well made, no difference could be perceived between the wig and my own hair, which was then removed. So far I had succeeded; but as the greatest caution was necessary in a proceeding of this nature, to avoid suspicion, I returned to the convent, where I remained quiet for several ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... cheery, fat face; and whenever he went to a tea-drinking party, the flirts were in raptures—our friend was so hearty! They'd fasten a cord near the foot of the door, and bring down the jolly old chap on the floor; they'd pull off his wig while he floundered about, and hide it, and laugh till he hunted it out; they would tie his coat-tails to the back of his seat, and scream with delight when he rose to his feet; they would send him at Christmas a box full of bricks, and play ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... officers of the province. Governor Bernard, Hutchinson, Oliver, Storey, Hallowell, and other men whom King George delighted to honor, were reviled as traitors to the country. Now and then, perhaps, an officer of the crown passed along the street, wearing the gold-laced hat, white wig, and embroidered waistcoat which were the fashion of the day. But when the people beheld him they set up a wild and angry howl; and their faces had an evil aspect, which was made more terrible by the flickering blaze ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... precisely in that haggard, unbecoming state of looks and costume significantly expressed in those days by the powder being out of a man's hair and his frills rumpled. So he absented himself for an hour, and returned freshened by a plunge in the river and a puff in his wig. But, alas! he found that Mistress Betty, without quitting Mistress Fiddy's bedchamber, and by the mere sleight of hand of tying on a worked apron with vine clusters and leaves and tendrils all in purple and green floss silks, pinning a pink bow under her ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... toupee periwig, which enormously injured the effect of his physiognomy—Klopstock wore the same, powdered and frizzled. By the bye, old men ought never to wear powder—the contrast between a large snow-white wig and the colour of an old man's skin is disgusting, and wrinkles in such a neighbourhood appear only channels for dirt. It is an honour to poets and great men, that you think of them as parts of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... frequently disturbed by cramps, or convulsive contractions[29], of the nature of that distemper called St. Vitus's dance. He wore a full suit of plain brown clothes, with twisted hair-buttons[30] of the same colour, a large bushy greyish wig, a plain shirt, black worsted stockings, and silver buckles. Upon this tour, when journeying, he wore boots, and a very wide brown cloth great coat, with pockets which might have almost held the two volumes of his folio Dictionary; and he carried in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... I want to know you, my dear," cried Mrs. Struthers in a round rolling voice that matched her bold feathers and her brazen wig. "I want to know everybody who's young and interesting and charming. And the Duke tells me you like music—didn't you, Duke? You're a pianist yourself, I believe? Well, do you want to hear Sarasate play tomorrow evening at my house? You know ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... doesn't stammer either. I'll try presently. Positively, if he wore spectacles and a wig of your hair, ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant

... she revives—when, quick as light, His cloak and wig are instantly thrown by— And what is that that greets her 'wildered sight? Ah! whose fond gaze now meets her longing eye?— Her own dear Alfred, from the wars returned, Had chosen thus to steal upon his love:— And whilst his kisses ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... When she was first informed of the fact, she imagined that the news could not be true, and that it was told only with an intention of deceiving her. At the time of her deliverance she had scarcely clothes sufficient to cover her; she wore a red wig, looked scared, and her understanding seemed stupefied: she said that she scarcely knew one human creature from another: her imprisonment had lasted nearly twenty years. The moment she regained her ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... memory in the crypt of the chapel, is now in the last state of dilapidation. The wind whistles through the broken windows of its funereal abode; and the plaster of the roof, detached from its skeleton of laths, powders his enormous wig, and soils the imperial robe that drapes his shoulders. But the spirit of the master of Cannons may console itself; for in the verses of the poets are monuments of infinitely greater durability than marble. And has not ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball

... whoever is this Kearns guy anyhow—I sure never heard his name before tonight an' I kinder got the idee in my head he must be some big-wig you ran up against when in Washington—somebody who had the orderin' around o' poor ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... A woman near Bloomah, with auburn wisps showing under her black wig, wrung her hands. 'I hear her talk—always, always about the red mark. Now they have given it her. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... him, Green," said he. "He had a wig on, but for your life mention not a syllable of this to your best friend. He is a villain of the deepest dye, and I ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... but wasn't this fun? He wig-wagged, "Don't give up the ship," and was delighted when he found that his sending had been so sure that Don ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger

... scientific accomplishments; she wanted me to print the piece, so that she might send a copy of it to her cousin in Mizzourah; she didn't think he'd have to do anything to the outside of his head to get into any of the societies; he had to wear a wig once, when he played ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... oh dear!" I exclaimed lugubriously; "I suppose I will be bald and have to wear a wig, like old Mr Bunting! My arm, too, mother, hurts awfully! and I can't ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... in succession I rise to a point of order." The Doctor was speaking. "Why is the lady with the butterfly on her back pushed away into one corner, and that horrible woman with the green wig accorded the ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... shrinking into a corner of the big room. She had very little colour of any sort to boast of. Her hair was of so light a brown that it just escaped being flaxen; but it had the negative merit of not being forced down to her eyebrows, and twisted into the hideous curly-wig which exhibits a liberal equality of ugliness on the heads of women in the present day. There was a delicacy of finish in her features—in the nose and the lips especially—a sensitive changefulness in the expression of her eyes (too dark in themselves to be quite in harmony ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... all was a young man with an agreeable face, who smiled superciliously from under a vast wig of powdered hair; a rose was in the buttonhole of his green cloth pelisse with orange facings, a red sabrecache hung against his boots a little lower than the hilt of his sabre. The costume represented a sprightly officer of the Royal Nassau hussars. The ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... whispered Chet, grinning, "she likes the romantic and dark complexioned style in heroes. Get some walnut stain and a black wig." ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison

... the voyage." From this puritanical criticism most readers will dissent. Hamilton was bred in Northumberland, and was at this time past forty. His portrait, the frontispiece to his book, represents him in the laced coat and powdered wig of the period, a man of middle age, with clever, well-cut features, and a large, humorous, and rather sensual mouth. His book, with all its faults of scandalous plain speech, is one that few naval surgeons of that day could have written. The style, ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards

... Whur you roamin' to now? Think I want to climb up there and pry you out o' the rocks? Come back here 'fore I git in your wig. Ouhee! Mother Biddies! I'll whittle on your hoofs, first thing you know. You won't enjoy traveling' so fast, if you're ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... near, among which we supposed the snake had hid itself. We of course advanced carefully, when presently in the distance we saw running over the ground a couple of curious-looking birds, with long legs and a remarkable crest, which Leo declared looked like a lawyer's wig. We hid ourselves behind a bush, and the birds, not seeing us, came boldly on. On a nearer approach David pointed out some feathers which seemed to stick out ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... Dunning busied himself in our behalf, and made himself exceedingly useful to us. In his character of an old bachelor, he had many acquaintances at the theatre; and through his friends of the green-room he supplied each of us with a wig. Both my uncle and myself spoke German reasonably well, and our original plan was to travel in the characters of immigrant trinket and essence pedlars. But I had a fancy for a hand-organ and a monkey; and it was finally agreed ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... her word, Antoinette appeared with food and drink early the following morning. She was again disguised as an old woman, and Hal and Chester could scarcely believe that a wig and a few dabs of paint could possibly conceal the girlish face they had seen ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes

... catastrophe. Miss Marchmont's pile overbalanced and fell into Jacob's compartment. Such things happened to Miss Marchmont. What was she seeking through millions of pages, in her old plush dress, and her wig of claret-coloured hair, with her gems and her chilblains? Sometimes one thing, sometimes another, to confirm her philosophy that colour is sound—or, perhaps, it has something to do with music. She could never quite say, though it was not for lack of trying. And she could not ask you back to her ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... mourning was it permitted to grow to a negligent length. By preference it should be somewhat wavy, but there was no parting. Dandies had their hair curled with the tongs and perfumed, so at to smell "all over the theatre." If they were bald, they wore a wig; sometimes they actually had imitation hair painted across the bare part of the scalp. If nature had given them the wrong colour, they corrected it with dye. If the exposed parts of the body were hairy, they plucked out the growth with tweezers or used depilatories. But ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... 'Why, I should do the very same thing to-morrow. And Howel's a decent chap too; will be, at least, when he's sown a few more wild oats. But if Netta doesn't lead him a dance I'm mistaken. She's father all over. There's a difference between her and that Irish girl! My wig! if she isn't a quiet one. But I never saw such eyes as hers in all my life, or such a sweet temper. I wonder what father would say if I ran off with her, and took her a voyage or two to give her a little more colour. That's all she wants to ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... that Mr. Deuceace was a barrystir, I don't mean that he went sesshums or surcoats (as they call 'em), but simply that he kep chambers, lived in Pump Cort, and looked out for a commitionarship, or a revisinship, or any other place that the Wig guvvyment could give him. His father was a Wig pier (as the landriss told me), and had been a Toary pier. The fack is, his lordship was so poar, that he would be anythink or nothink, to get provisions for his sons and ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... called in, and without hesitation he recognized two of the men he had seen at the ammunition plant just before the explosion occurred. One fellow was a clean-shaven man, but it was proved that he was in the habit of wearing a heavy wig and ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield

... the civilised world. I've seen men fooled, from boys without hair on their faces, to old men without much on their heads. I've seen it done in a way that was pretty to watch, and I've seen it done in a manner that has made me feel that given a wig and a petticoat I could do it better myself. But never have I seen it neater played than Marie played it on that young man of hers. One day she would greet him for all the world like a tired child that at last ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome

... the mob began to tear up the stalls of the market-place in Dock-square, and swore that they would attack the main-guard. Some peaceable citizens exerted themselves to allay their fury, and they had well nigh succeeded in persuading many of them to retire, when a tall man in a red cloak and white wig appeared among them, and incited them by a brief harangue to carry out their design. His discourse was followed by shouts of "To the main guard! To the main guard! We will destroy the soldiers!" The mob then separated into three divisions, each of which took separate roads. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... the bag-wig, sir," returned his dragoman; "and that little lot is the jury," he added, indicating twelve ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... doubtfu' of a man, take auld Robin Ruthven's plan, an' look for the cloven foot, for it's a thing that winna weel hide; an' it appears whiles where ane wadna think o't. It will keek out frae aneath the parson's gown, the lawyer's wig, and the Cameronian's blue bannet; but still there is a gouden rule whereby to detect it, an' that never, never fails.' The auld witch didna gie me the rule, an' though I hae heard tell o't often an' often, shame fa' ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... callings (from the chimney-tops) have been to our mustachioed and be-whiskered dandies, who, instead of apologizing to a female after they may have splashed her from head to foot, trod on her heel, or nearly carried away her bonnet, feathers, cap, and wig, only add to her confusion by an unmanly, impudent stare ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various

... splendid lecture, Sir, that of yours last Thursday, given to the architectural and other Academical students. who, acting upon your advice, should be each one the architect of his own fortune. Your sharply dashed-off portrait of The Grand Monarque, the 'Roi Soleil, majestic in the many-storey'd wig,'—the King being built up quite mon-architecturally,—'which encircled his retreating brow,' was masterly. More power to your elbow, Sir FREDERICK—that is, if you require it. Mr. Punch, Universal President of Brother Brushes, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various

... was stuffed into the unconscious man's mouth; the long coat and boots were jerked from his limp body before his hands and feet were bound with the rope he carried; the bushy whiskers and wig were removed from his head and transferred in a flash to that of the American. Then the boots, coat and hat found a ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... Claus, that comes puffin' down the chimney," explained Prudy, who knew very well it would be only cousin Percy under a mask and white wig. ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May

... be in our class," she coaxed persuasively. "We hev a new teacher. She's a real swell and wears a diamon' ring and her hair is more yaller than the wig what the play lady wears. She bed us up to her house to a supper last week, and thar was velvit carpits and ice-cream and lots of cake but ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates

... they been my sisters I could not have been fonder of them." The two Viosmenils and their aides were at Joseph Wanton's, in Thames street. The Wantons had been governors of Rhode Island from 1732: Joseph Wanton was the last governor under the Crown. He is described as wearing a large white wig with three curls—one falling down his back and one forward over each shoulder. De Chastelleux lodged with Captain Maudsly, at No. 91 Spring street; De Choisy at Jacob Riviera's in Water street; the marquis de Laval and the vicomte de Noailles at Thomas Robinson's, in Water ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... the preceding month, a man who answered to the description of Rochdale given by the first driver and the bric-a- brac seller, being fair-haired, pale, tall, and broad-shouldered, came to his shop to order a wig and a beard; these were to be so well constructed that no one could recognize him, and were intended, he said, to be worn at a fancy ball. The unknown person was accordingly furnished with a black wig and a black beard, and he provided himself with all the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... feeling as she laughed with the little old governess dressed up in ancient brocades from a chest in the garret, the dowager Marquise of the proverb just played. And a little further, in the shadow of the doorway, stood Angelot in powdered wig, silk coat, and sword, looking like a handsome courtier from a group by Watteau, and his eyes showed plainly enough what woman, if not what cause, attracted him at the moment. As to causes, Monsieur Joseph and the Vicomte des Barres ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... hands full for the rest of his life, however small he had thought it. As for the sublime four years' deliberations and debates of this Sanhedrim of the Universe—eloquent debates, conducted, we may say, under such extent of wig as was never seen before or since—they have fallen wholly to the domain of Dryasdust; and amount, for mankind at this time, to zero plus the burning of Huss. On the whole, Burggraf Friedrich's Electorship, and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... her walk, and her gestures, that you might make a bet about it. Her face is large without being defective, all her features are the same and strongly marked, a pretty tolerable turn of countenance, set off by a very singular head-dress; that is, a man's wig, very big, and very much raised in front; the top of the head is a tissue of hair, and the back has something of a woman's style of head-dress. Sometimes she also wears a hat; her bodice, laced behind, crosswise, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... whose ambition and brotherly love were alike interested in her success; and within an hour she had assumed the attire of one of the pages of his household. Having covered her own hair with a black wig, and stained her face and hands with a dark dye, she hastened to the convent in which she had been married to Monsieur, in order to take leave of the Abbesse de Remiremont, and created great alarm among the nuns, who, while engaged in their devotions, suddenly saw an armed man standing in the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... of a ducal house that had run to seed, a political agitator, a grass widow whose titled husband was governor of an obscure colony, an ancient dowager with hair which was too luxuriant to be anything but a wig, and diamonds which were so ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... not," replied Tom, as he invaded the lower regions of the man who attended to the fires, to borrow a long poker. "We want this for some fun. There's a prof. who has a room just under ours, and he wears a wig. It's out on the window sill to air, and I think ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman

... you driving at there?" said Mr. Featherstone, holding his stick between his knees and settling his wig, while he gave her a momentary sharp glance, which seemed to react on him like a draught of cold ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... look at was that hair. And when he passed 'em on the river-road after they come from the post-office, he couldn't see her hair at all, cause she had on a big hat tied on with some thin light blue stuff. He reckoned maybe her hair was a wig." ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... (imbecility) 499. V. be insane &c. adj. become insane &c. adj; lose one's senses, lose one's reason, lose one's faculties, lose one's wits; go mad, run mad, lose one's marbles [coll.], go crazy, go bonkers [coll.], flip one's wig [coll.], flip one's lid[coll.], flip out[coll.], flip one's bush [coll.]. rave, dote, ramble, wander; drivel &c. (be imbecile) 499; have a screw loose &c. n., have a devil; avoir le diable au corps[Fr]; lose one's head &c. (be uncertain) 475. render mad, drive mad &c adj.; madden, dementate[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... [Looking confused from one to another.] A jest, Captain Fuller—capital—ha, ha, ha—[Aside to ROSE.] What mischief have I tumbled into now, and who is that fellow in a very red coat and a very white wig? ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce

... this point Vance had appeared only as a stage manager. He had been concerned with his groupings, his lights, in assigning to his confederates the parts they were to play. Now that the curtain was to rise, as an actor puts on a wig and grease paint, Vance assumed a certain voice and manner. On the stage the critics would have called him a convincing actor. He made his audience believe what he believed. He knew the eloquence of a pause, the value of a surprised, unintelligible ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis

... intelligent eye, and hair dressed in the first style of fashion. I never thought myself vain, but I own that in my youth I did pique myself upon my hair. There was but one opinion about that. I have often heard even grown-up people remark, 'How ingeniously that doll's wig is put on, and how nicely it is arranged!' while at the same time my rising vanity was crushed by the insinuation that I had an absurd ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown

... was always extremely neat in his dress, and attentive to his person, and made a most respectable appearance. A portrait of him still hangs in the Abbey, representing him a hale fresh-looking fellow, in a flaxen wig, a blue coat and buff waistcoat, with a pipe in his hand. He discharged all the duties of his station with great fidelity, unquestionable honesty, and much outward decorum, but, if we may believe his contemporary, Nanny Smith, who, as housekeeper, shared the sway of the household with him, he was ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... its like were strange to him. The performance seemed wholly contemptible and absurd. Men and women screamed with laughter and roared applause at jests which were either inane or hateful. A noisy man in a long-waisted overcoat, whose skirts swept the stage, a blonde wig, flying yellow whiskers, and a white hat at a raking angle, sang an idiotic song with patter interspersed between the verses. He described a visit received from Lord Off-his-Chump, Lady Off-her-Chump, and all the honourable Misses Off-their-Chumps. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... by about forty tin wash-basins and water-pails, with coarse, dirty crash towels suspended on rollers above them. By the side of each of these towels hung a comb and a brush, to which a lock of every body's hair was clinging, forming in the total a stock sufficient to establish any barber in the wig business. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... some auction-rooms, where you may find any article of wearing apparel or household furniture, from a lady's wig a la Caraculla to a bed a la Grecque: here are as many puffers as in a mock auction in London; and should you be tempted to bid, by the apparent cheapness of the object put up for sale, it is fifty to one that you soon repent of your bargain. Not so with the magazins de ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... another bunk stirred feebly, and two feet encased in black merino stockings descended slowly to the floor. A moment later a ghastly figure was tottering across the floor, lifting from a box a beautifully waved white wig, and dropping it carefully over the head of the aggrieved old lady of the ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... her tavern door and watched her husband drive his stage-coach, four-in-hand, down the long lane and out into the country. Above her head hung the tavern sign—a portrait of the Earl of Halifax, resplendent in his scarlet coat and flaxen wig. Looking down, he was struck afresh with the charms of the tavern-keeper's handsome wife, and, though he was in a somewhat battered condition owing to his advanced age and the extremes of weather to which he had been exposed, he almost made up his mind to fall at ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman

... concluded one evening to go and make himself merry in the little salon of Madame F——, who was very plainly domesticated in a room on the first floor in the house of a joiner, in the Rue des Minimes. In order not to be recognized, he was dressed as a citizen, and wore a wig and spectacles. He took into his confidence General Bertrand, who was already in great favor with him, and who did all in his power to render his ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Joe—his favorite exclamation—at the same time rumpling his hair, as though that were the wig he referred to. "What a great thing it would be if we could but drain those ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... what I means," said Mrs. Mowgelewsky, nodding her ponderous head until her quite incredible wig slipped back and forth upon it. "Morris needs he shall have money. He could to fix the house so good like I can. He don't needs no neighbors rubberin'. He could to buy what he needs on the store. But ten cents a day he needs. His papa ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... booze, and he was still a little drunk in spite of his ten hours of sleep. And, clenching his fist, he complained aloud. Mon Dieu! she was gone now, his poor mother, whom he loved so much! Ah! what a headache he had; it would settle him! It was like a wig of fire! And now they were tearing out his heart! No, it was not just of fate thus to set itself against ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... said?—what Seed and South? And, by the way, who were they, these worthies? It is a solemn thought that so little is conveyed to us by names which to the palaeo-Georgians conveyed so much. We discern a dim, composite picture of a big man in a big wig and a billowing black gown, with a big congregation beneath him. But we are not anxious to hear what he is saying. We know it is all very elegant. We know it will be printed and be bound in finely-tooled full calf, and no palaeo-Georgian gentleman's library will be complete without ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... chariot-wheels. First came Mr. Dinwiddie, the Lieutenant-Governor of his Majesty's province, attended by his negro servants, and in company of Parson Broadbent, the jolly Williamsburg chaplain. These were presently joined by little Mr. Dempster, the young gentlemen's schoolmaster, in his great Ramillies wig, which he kept for occasions of state. Anon appeared Mr. Laws, the judge of the court, with Madam Laws on a pillion behind him, and their negro man carrying a box containing her ladyship's cap, and bestriding a mule. The procession looked so ludicrous, that Major Danvers and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... seemed all face and waistcoat. When he had rolled in upon two little turned legs, and sat down at his desk, all you could see of him was two little eyes, one broad pink face, and about half of a comical, big wig. Scarcely had the jurors taken their seats, when Mrs. Bardell's lawyers brought in the lady herself, half hysterical, and supported by two tearful lady friends. The ushers called for ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... sex in all things was very dear to my mother. And indeed this I have learned, that the flag of Womanhood you shall ever find upheld by all true women, flouted only by the false. For a judge in petticoats is ever but a witness in a wig. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... man, with white whiskers and a black wig, a keen black eye, always in search of the ludicrous in other people, and a mouth ever on the move, as if masticating ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... Tenor's, she put both hands up to her head as the Boy would have done—so the Tenor, still confused between the two, expressed it to himself; and the old familiar gesture sent another pang through his heart. The water had washed the flaxen wig away, but the thick braids of her hair were still pinned up tightly, accounting for the shape of the remarkable head about which the Boy had so often, and, as was now evident, so ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... Tom, with beaming face, for he had caught sight of Raffles' powdered wig at the door; "there's some grub ready in the next room. It would have been ready ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... canny man, and he had brought with him a wig and certain other properties. He hunted out a little tea shop, where he meditated over three cups of pekoe and hot buttered toast. Then he made his way to the Public Library, where he spent several hours over a cook-book. He was complimenting himself on having shaken the ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley

... flowering knots upon the sills, the walls new-harled* and a chase-dog sitting yawning on the step like one that was at home. Well, I was even envying this dumb brute, when the door fell open and there issued forth a shrewd, ruddy, kindly, consequential man in a well-powdered wig and spectacles. I was in such a plight that no one set eyes on me once, but he looked at me again; and this gentleman, as it proved, was so much struck with my poor appearance that he came straight up to me and ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... head. What was to be done? I couldn't move. I blew at her, and blew and blew till my breath was all gone. It was horrible! The queen settled right on the bald part of my head—for I had taken off my wig as usual to save it—and now the whole swarm flew at my face. That was enough for me. Quickly I rolled out of bed, freed myself from the blanket, wriggled out of the wet sheets, and reached the door, for the devil was at my heels. I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... of steel mail, of which the last in France, where daggers are no longer dreaded, was worn by King Louis XVI., who feared the dagger at his breast, and whose head was cleft with a hatchet. The tunic soon disappeared under a long cassock, as did his hair under a priest's wig; the three-cornered hat over this effectually transformed the count into ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Mrs. Quarles has, in her peculiar fashion, undressed herself: that is to say, she has taken off her outer gown, her cap and wig—and then has added to the volume of her under garments, divers night habiliments, flannelled and frilled: while wrappers, manifold as a turbaned Turk's, protect ear-ache, tooth-ache, head-ache, and face-ache, from the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... ought not to be made at all. It makes my head itch, & ach, & burn like anything Mamma. This famous roll is not made wholly of a red Cow Tail, but is a mixture of that, & horsehair (very course) & a little human hair of yellow hue, that I suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D—— made it (our head) all carded together and twisted up. When it first came home, aunt put it on, & my new cap on it, she then took up her apron & mesur'd me, & from the roots of my hair on my forehead to the top of my notions, I mesur'd above an inch ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow

... the General for a moment; but he replied bruskly: "Do you think that I keep my eyes in my pocket? What you have remarked did not escape my notice; only I said to myself, here is a young man who has profited by leave of absence to visit the wig maker." ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... do that without fear. We are about the same height. I should have a wig made to imitate your hair, and should, I imagine, have no difficulty in getting my face made up so as to be able to pass for you. You must be so well known that they will do no more than glance at me as I go in. The only alternative to that will ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... as the horrors of unveiled hell, and terrible as the wrath of incensed Deity!—Come, thou spirit, but not in these horrid forms; come with the milder, gentle, easy inspirations, which thou breathest round the wig of a prating advocate, or the tete of a tea-sipping gossip, while their tongues run at the light-horse gallop of clish-maclaver for ever and ever—come and assist a poor devil who is quite jaded in the attempt to share half an idea among ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... I caught him touching up his wig behind the trees after our swim," cut in Geordie, wagging a derisive finger at Steve, who promptly silenced him by a smart rap on the head with the drum-stick he had just ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... continually thinking about him. But to be married—oh, that's a different thing. Perhaps he'd want to live in the country. That would be horribly dull, especially if he had to come to London often. He hopes to be a great lawyer some day he says. I don't think I'd like him in a wig and gown and white bands. He would look so horribly old. Oh, but I wouldn't let him have his rooms in the Temple after we're married. He'll have to burn his musty old books. He won't need them. His father's very rich. He's told me so hundreds ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... remarkable gift for carving portraits in ivory. After Penn's death, he made such a portrait of him from memory. The men who had known William liked it greatly. Lord Cobham, to whom Bevan sent it, said, "It is William Penn himself." It represents him in a curled wig, with full cheeks and a double chin—a pleasant, masterful, and serious person. Clarkson says that in his attire he was "very neat, though plain." Penn advised his children to choose clothes "neither ...
— William Penn • George Hodges

... not see any reason for giving vent to this extravagant joy; and I must have had even at that time somehow or other a presentiment of what would soon happen, as in communicating this intelligence to a friend in India I made use of these words: "get a court dress made, my good friend, and a big wig, ruffled shirt, and hair-powder, and stick an old-fashioned sword by your side, for, depend on it, old fashions will come into play again; the most arbitrary and aristocratic notions will be revived and terrible machinations will be framed against ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... sea; and then off goes another coat, and he comes out a British soldier in white duck trousers and red coat. That comes off, and he is an American sailor, with his hands on his hips, dancing a horn-pipe. Suddenly away flash wig and beard and false-face, the pantaloons are stripped off with the same movement, the actor stoops for the reins lying on the horse's neck, and James Rivers, the greatest three-horse rider in the world, nimbly capers ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells

... Ithuel would not consent to trust himself near the Proserpine without disguising his person. Raoul being well provided with all the materials for a masquerade, this had been effected by putting a black curling wig over his own lank, sandy hair, coloring his whiskers and eyebrows, and trusting the remainder to the transformation which might be produced by the dress, or rather undress, of a Neapolitan waterman. The greatest obstacle to this arrangement had been a certain queue, which Ithuel habitually ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... rose with care to his feet. His wig was awry, his cravat of fine mechlin under one ear. Benevolent smiles played like summer lightning across his flushed face. He raised his tankard slowly and with attentive steadiness. "Gentlemen," he said in a high voice, "we have eaten and we have drunken. Dick Verney's ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... a wig with the hair parted at the side passed in front of the tables, with a basket filled with pieces of Savoy cake and ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... from a long illness. The flesh hung in little bags underneath his bloodshot eyes, his mouth twitched continually, and the hand which rested on the table trembled. He wore a scanty grey moustache, which failed to hide a weak thin mouth, and a very obvious wig concealed his baldness. His clothes had seen plenty of service and his linen was doubtful. He had evidently ordered some brandy immediately on his entrance, and his eyes met mine just as he was in the act of raising the glass ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Major Trenton, holding the picture in his left hand, and bringing down his right upon the table with a thump that set all the glasses jingling, ''tis a perfect likeness of him, and yet, Moore, if ye had but given him a judge's wig and robes instead of a cassock, he would be the double of damned old hanging Norbury up there,' pointing to the picture of an Irish judge which hung on the wall. 'Come,' he added, 'Mrs Egerton must see this. I know our hostess loves ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... acquaintance, some friends of the old President offering to present me to him. But I did not avail myself of their offer, because I knew the old man did not like to be shown as a curiosity. When I saw him sitting at his window he always wore a wig, and few had seen him without his wig and without his academic gown. He was certainly an exceptional man, and I believe he stood alone in the whole history of literature, as having published books at an interval of seventy years. His edition of the ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... beaked and disfigured, with nostrils of different shape, and he was undershot like a bulldog, and unusually pitted with smallpox even for those ante-vaccination days, when it was the ordinary thing to show the marks of this plague. He always wore a wig, too; beginning when he was a child of six, "for the sake of cleanliness"! and continuing to the day of his death, even when wigs were ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... Father of these children had had the misfortune to lose his hair, and he was obliged to wear a wig. Every night, when he went to bed, he used to take off his wig, and hang it upon a nail in his dressing-room, and put on a white night-cap with a long tassel at the end ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... there will always be a "persiflage" like that of Voltaire to clear the human stage of stupid tyranny and drive the mud-monsters of obscurantism back into their mid-night caverns. He was a queer kind of Apollo—this little great man with his old-fashioned wig and the fur-cloak "given him by Catherine of Russia"—but the flame which inspired him was the authentic fire, and the arrows with which he fought were dipped in the golden ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... write tales such as this of mine, how charmingly might not thy characters have come forth upon the canvas—how much more charmingly than I can limn them! While, on the other hand, ignorant as thou now tellest me that I am of the very alphabet of the courts, had thy wig been allotted to me, I might have gathered guineas thick as daisies in summer, while to thee perhaps they come no faster than snow-drops in the early spring. It is all in our destiny. Chance had thrown that terrible earl in the way of the poor girl in her early youth, and she had married him. She ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... betake himself to the huge garret," the secrets of which he wonders at, "but is too reverent of their dust and cobwebs to disturb." He is likely to "bow below the shriveled canvas of an old (Puritan) clergyman in wig and gown—the parish priest of a century ago—a friend of Whitefield." He is likely to come under the spell of this reverend Ghost who haunts the "Manse" and as it rains and darkens and the sky glooms through the dusty attic windows, he is likely "to muse deeply and wonderingly upon the humiliating ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... do say so, sir. And if you hadn't come round to me tonight, dash my wig if I wouldn't have come round to you tomorrow. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... every father to his son. Ned was not only considered as a thriving trader, but as a man of elegance and politeness, for he was remarkably neat in his dress, and would wear his coat threadbare without spotting it; his hat was always brushed, his shoes glossy, his wig nicely curled, and his stockings without a wrinkle. With such qualifications it was not very difficult for him to gain the heart of Miss Comfit, the only daughter of Mr. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... long been in controversy. Burbage, who acted the part in Shakespeare's presence, wore a red wig and was frightful in form and aspect. The red wig gives a hint of low comedy, and it may be that the great actor made use of low comedy expedients to cloak Shylock's inveterate malignity and sinister purpose. Dogget, who played the part in Lord Lansdowne's alteration of Shakespeare's piece, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... not—having decided to make the appearance, and win the impression of falseness—be natural. Hence he is self-conscious all the time lest he make a slip, contradict himself, lose the result he is seeking to attain. He is to be compared to an actor whose part requires him to wear a wig, a false moustache, a false chin. In the hurry of preparation these shams are not adjusted properly and the actor rushes on the stage fearful every moment lest his wig is awry, his moustache fall off, or the chin slip aside and make him ridiculous. He dare not stop to make sure, to ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... must he!" said Horace, making a face at which none present, not even Helen, could forbear to smile. "His heart, I am sure, is in the right place always. I only wish one could say the same of his wig. And would it be amiss if he sometimes (I would not be too hard upon him, Miss Stanley), once a fortnight, suppose—brushed, or caused to be brushed, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... Stairs, At the Room Door her good Mamma appears, Soon as she spies her Child with Looks demure, She charges her to keep her Vessel pure: Miss pertly answers to avoid her Doom, Mamma, whose Hat and Wig is in the Room? The good old Dame yeilds at the just Reproach, Cries—Well my ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous

... a horde of common people running a government with no head but their own wills is preposterous!" cried the proud old Tory Ralph Jeffries, as he settled his wig with a shake of the head and pulled out his lace ruffles. "Are these canting Puritans going to rule us ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... stood in an empty soda-water bottle on each side of the looking-glass, and there was no other light. On the floor a pair of stays, old and soiled, sprawled with unconcern. The place looked sordid and miserable, and Hilda sitting in the middle of it, still in the yellow wig and painted face of Mrs. Halliday, all wrong at that range, gave it a note of false artifice, violent and grievous. Stephen stood in the doorway grasping the handle, saying nothing, and an instant passed ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... court-room everything was very solemn and wonderful. It was a high, big room. Raised above the floor, against the wall was the judge's desk; and here the judge was already sitting—an old, handsome man in a marvelous big wig of gray hair and a gown of black. Below him was another wide, long desk at which lawyers in white wigs sat. The whole thing reminded me of a mixture between a church and ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... stopped. When he went overboard the water had washed off his hat. Likewise it had washed off his long black hair—which was a wig—and his head was all round and shiny and bald, like a gull's egg ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... fair shepherdess of old romance, Is seen no more. The character is lost. Her head adorned with lappets pinned aloft And ribbons streaming gay, superbly raised And magnified beyond all human size, Indebted to some smart wig-weaver's hand For more than half the tresses it sustains; Her elbows ruffled, and her tottering form Ill propped upon French heels; she might be deemed (But that the basket dangling on her arm Interprets her more truly) ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... absurdity how lamentable and dreadful!—of this same human craving for literal preservation of that which should not, cannot, be preserved. It was in the lumber-room of an Italian palace; a life-size doll, with wig of real—perhaps personally real—hair, and dressed from head to foot in the garments of the real poor lady, dead some seventy years ago. I wrote a little tale about it; but the main facts were true, and far surpassed the ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... after his having repeatedly shouted Vive le Roi et la Nation! They wanted him to shout Vive la Nation! alone, upon which he gave Vive la Nation tant qu'elle pourra."—At Blois, on the day of the Federation, a mob promenades the streets with a wooden head covered with a wig, and a placard stating that ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... locking the door on the inside. I trembled exceedingly, knowing that his eyes are in every place. I ransacked the chamber, dived among his clothes, but found no stone. One singular thing in a drawer I saw: a long, white beard, and a wig of long and snow-white hair. As I passed out of the chamber, lo, he stood face to face with me at the door in the passage. My heart gave one bound, and then seemed wholly to cease its travail. Oh, ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... four neckcloths, and seven pair of cuffs (probably one a day for the week) to one shirt. His having, in respect to the last garment, was probably like Poins'] and if the reader [Footnote: "one for superfluity and one other for use." The cap was probably that which he wore when he laid aside his wig. His hose, of colored silk, probably made only "semi-occasional" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... outward demonstration of respect—"keeps the word of promise to the ear, and breaks it to the sense." Dean Swift's famous question to the man carrying the hare, "Pray, sir, is that your own hare or a wig?" is perfect in its way. Here there is an absolute identity of sound with an equally absolute and therefore ludicrous disparity of meaning. Hood abounds in examples of this sort of fun—only that his analogies are of a more subtle and perplexing ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... really thought that a gentleman, with his dinner in a pocket-handkerchief, who stood near us, would have fainted with excess of joy. A marvellously facetious gentleman that comic singer is; his distinguishing characteristics are, a wig approaching to the flaxen, and an aged countenance, and he bears the name of one of the English counties, if we recollect right. He sang a very good song about the seven ages, the first half-hour of which afforded the assembly ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... Lavington no longer. She has married, to the astonishment of the world in general, that 'excellent man,' Mr. O'Blareaway, who has been discovered not to be quite as young as he appeared, his graces being principally owing to a Brutus wig, which he has now wisely discarded. Mrs. Lavington now sits in state under her husband's ministry, as the leader of the religious world in the fashionable watering-place of Steamingbath, and derives her notions of the past, present, and future state of the universe principally from those ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... he removed the hot wig and beard he wore, and went up the stairs two at a time. "My dear Cleek, what an abnormal animal you are! Had you"—entering the room where his now famous ally (divested of the disguise which served for the role of "Captain ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... Nearminster road. The children knew it and its owner very well, for it was not more than half a mile from the rectory, and they passed it whenever they drove into Nearminster. Its casement window was generally open, so that they could see him bending over his papers with his greenish wig pushed back from his forehead, and his large nose almost touching the top of his pen. The doctor was a tall, portly person with a red face, and had the air of being deeply occupied with some inward subject, so that he could spare ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... opportunity of knowing that they had a remarkable man amongst them, but, with a stupidity all their own, they wouldn't see it; so that when the solicitor who once gave me a brief died—I believe it was a softening of the brain—I burned my wig and ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... the frontispiece of Sir W. Stirling Maxwell's 'Life,' the painter appears as a man of swarthy complexion, with a long compressed upper lip, unconcealed by his long, elaborately trimmed moustache; his hair, or wig, is arranged in two large frizzed bunches on each side of a face which is inclined to be lantern-jawed. He wears a dark doublet with a ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... curiously-projecting chin, that threatens a meeting, at no very distant day, with his nasal organ; two small, watchful blue eyes deep-set under narrow arches, fringed with long gray lashes; a deeply-furrowed, but straight and contracted forehead, and a shaggy red wig, poised upon the crown of his head, and, reader, if you except the constant working of a heavy, drooping lower lip, and the diagonal sight with which his eyes are favored, you have his most prominent features. Fashion he holds in utter contempt, nor ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... inspects at Paris "the giraffe, the three-legged goat, the kangaroos," without much of the vertigo of precipices, and he sees "M. de La Fayette and his white locks—at different places, however," for the latter were in a locket and the hero was in his brown wig. Elsewhere he associates "the virtuous La Fayette and James Watt the cotton-spinner." The age of industry, commerce and the Citizen-King, in fact, was not quite suited to the poet who celebrated Napoleon; yet was Heine's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... The wig also was promised within the hour. The spirit of completeness descended upon the Babe. On his way back to his lodgings in Great Queen Street, he purchased a ladylike umbrella and ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... what has Walsingham been saying to you?" inquired the good-humoured monarch. "I find, sire, I have been unintentionally guilty of disrespect by not taking off my hat when I address your majesty; but you will please to observe, that whenever I hunt my hat is fastened to my wig, and my wig to my head; and as I am mounted on a very spirited horse, if any thing goes off, we must all go off together." The king laughed heartily at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various

... devote herself to deeds of charity for the remainder of her days. To that end she made inquiry of the excellent parson under whom she sat on Sundays, at a vertical distance of twenty feet. But he could only adjust his wig and tap his snuff-box; for such was the lukewarm state of religion in those days, that not an aisle, steeple, porch, east window, Ten-Commandment board, lion-and-unicorn, or brass candlestick, was required ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy



Words linked to "Wig" :   flip one's wig, postiche, scolding, Afro-wig, peruke, tongue-lashing, wigging, horsehair wig, wig tree, chiding, periwig, grizzle, hairpiece, false hair



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